Some trauma I've been able to heal from and it is final! Particularly trauma as it related to terrible work environment situations, and actually, health and academic challenges in my graduate programs that had devasting effects on my life. Well, that's a mouth full, and it took years, but I'm healed as possible from those heartbreaks and setbacks.
As I've been struggling the past few years as it relates to all this race terror, I notice it seems like there's no end in sight, and reconciliation regarding the beginning (events from way before even my ancestors were born). There's just nothing that's been resolved; there have been no consequences for the perps, none of the inhumane systems are budging, any "progress" made through the centuries has been too slow and ineffective, the truth is there has not been any real progress, only little pockets of it here and there for people who've had an extreme amounts of favor (myself included) to which they were able to break through some of the infinite amount of race barriers.
Thus, I'm not sure it's possible to completely heal from this thing called "race." It's not even about racism and racial injustices. Fact is, "race" should not even exist. Therefore, any and everything that deals with race, is already rooted in terror. And being that the entire modern day global economy is fueled by race, then it feels impossible to ever fully be released from the terror.
Even my therapist agreed! Sometimes, the burdens are too heavy and overwhelming.
Expecting to feel anywhere near 100% painless every single day, at every moment, is not the goal to have. However, when the pain comes up, there have to be ways to deal with and manage the pain so that it does not take over my life.
In no way am I supposed to be hurting constantly. That's not acceptable and I don't deserve that. However, expecting to be completely painless is not realistic.
HOPE: So what is realistic for me:
+Having the pain as minimized as possible as to where, let's say I'm out somewhere enjoying myself in nature or something, and I see something that reminds me of race, and even also the mistreatment of animals, my goal is just to be like I have been before, which is just experiencing my own life that the pain doesn't have time to manifest.
+Of course, I can't always be near the ocean, or bird watching, or on photography shoots, or at a great movie, or at a lovely dinner, or near a lake, or in Gatlinburg, TN lol, my favorite vacation spot. Most times in life, we're not riding on quite that much dopamine or other exciting hormones. However...
+The relieving thing is that it doesn't take special events and traveling to not feel pain. Maybe the ancestors and angels come through, and even in my own home I can feel just fine. The past few months and years, that feeling fine has been more sporadic than I'd like. There just keep being event after event and tragedy after tragedy and more and more growing and ruthless anti-Blackness on social media and the rest of the Internet, I think even my angels and ancestors got overwhelmed and couldn't provide me that divine comfort that I deserve
+Thus, the more I 1) drastically limit my exposure to anti-Blackness (and animal ethics etc) 2) nurture my mind, body and spirit in the context of recovery from race issues then 3) my ancestors, angels and spirit guides 🙂 Lol, will have an easier time comforting and keeping me happy in spite of what's out there
😀🦋🦋
